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Our future, our universe, and other weighty topics

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Teenage World Savior: A Science Fiction Story

All attempts to defeat
the hostile extraterrestrial invasion had failed utterly. A meeting of
military officers was convened at the house of Jonas MacDonald, a
physicist who specialized in high-energy physics. The officers were
there to ask the physicist if he knew of any high-tech way that the
invading extraterrestrials could be attacked, perhaps with something
such as lasers or electromagnetic pulse weapons.

“So far our military
efforts have been a complete disaster,” said General Curtis. “After
the aliens landed in New Jersey, and wiped out many people, we've hit them with every
conventional weapon we had. We've dropped countless bombs. We've
strafed them with our jets again and again. We've shelled the hell
out of them with our best artillery. But we're getting nowhere. The
alien stronghold keeps growing larger and larger.”

“Why aren't such
attacks working?” asked MacDonald.

“They seem to have some
kind of strange energy bubble around their landing area,” explained
Curtis. “It's some kind of super-strong energy field that is able
to vaporize incoming bombs and bullets. Whenever we shoot something
at the alien stronghold, our bombs and bullets just kind of melt as
soon as they touch the protective energy bubble.”

“Have you thought about
using nuclear weapons?” asked MacDonald.

“No, that's out of the
question,” explained General Curtis. “The prevailing winds would
cause radioactive fallout to drift on to New York City.”

“Do you have a picture
of what these extraterrestrials look like?” asked MacDonald.

General Wheeler produced
a photograph, and put a picture on the table.

“Let me think,” said
MacDonald. “There might be some kind of high-energy proton beam we
could use to attack these things.”

MacDonald's 13-year-old
son Artie walked into the room. Artie should have been at school, but
he had got suspended for starting a big food fight in his high school
cafeteria.

“Is that what the
aliens look like?” asked Artie. “Cool.”

“This meeting is
classified,” said MacDonald. “Artie, clear out of here.”

The men continued to
discuss MacDonald's ideas for a high-energy proton beam. Twenty
minutes later Artie came back into the room.

“Dad, I know I'm not
supposed to be here,” said Artie. “But I've got an idea. I've got
an idea about how you might defeat the aliens.”

“Artie, have you lost
your senses?” asked MacDonald. “Nobody wants to hear a teenager's
ideas on saving the world from an alien invasion.”

“But, Dad, it's a
really good idea,” said Artie.

“Let the boy speak,”
said General Curtis. “Right now, we're desperate for new ideas.”

“I got the idea from
the cafeteria food fight I got suspended for,” said Artie. “We
can fight the aliens with food.”

“I'm not kidding, Dad,”
said Artie. “There's a way to do it. Look at that picture of the
alien. He has no real nose. Just a kind of a slit for a nose. So my
guess is these aliens are probably sensitive to particles in the air.
If we bombard them with fine particles, it may kill them. The easiest
way to bombard them with fine particles is by using spices.”

“Spices of what type?”
asked General Wheeler.

“Any type of spice that
is a very fine powder,” explained Artie. “Cinnamon or curry
powder would probably do the job.”

“That's the craziest
idea I've ever heard,” said MacDonald. “The aliens are protected by an energy bubble that would
make it so that the powder couldn't even fall into the alien
stronghold.”

“But it just might
work,” said General Wheeler. “Who knows – maybe their
protective energy bubble was only designed for things like bombs and
bullets. Maybe a fine powder could get through that thing. Let's give
it a try.”

So the conventional
high-explosive bombs were taken out of a military jet. Two giant vats
of cinnamon and curry powder were loaded into the jet. The jet made a
bombing run of the alien stronghold, dumping the curry powder and
cinnamon on to the strange alien structures.

The protective
energy bubble of the aliens had been designed to destroy only incoming objects
larger than about a millimeter. The curry powder and cinnamon fell
right through the protective bubble.

The aliens breathed in
the curry powder and cinnamon, and all died instantly. They came
from a dustless planet, and had never evolved any apparatus for
protecting their lungs from fine particles.

And so the teenage boy
who had started a food fight at his high school cafeteria became
known as the unlikely world savior who started a food fight that
saved planet Earth.

Copyright Notice

All posts on this blog are authored by Mark Mahin, and are protected by copyright. Copyright 2013-2014 by Mark Mahin. All rights reserved. Any resemblance between any fictional character and any real person is purely coincidental.